" Not a set-back attended the course of
my recovery. First, I sat propped up in bed; then I attained the dignity
of an arm-chair; later, slowly and painfully, I began to drag myself
about the room. But the day on which my physician's rapture burst all
bounds was the great one when I crawled from the pavilion, gained a
bench beneath the trees, and sat enthroned, glaring at my crutches. They
were detestable implements; I longed to smash them. And they would, the
doctor airily informed me, be my portion for three months.
To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingratitude.
It was an idyllic place. My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a Marie
Antoinette bower, all flowers and gold. Fresh green woods grew about
it; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where trees
were mirrored, and there were marble steps and balustrades. Across this
glittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with its
formal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front. In
the afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or being
pushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them;
wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroic
fellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off than
I.
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